“Fear is a tool of control. It is fear of punishment that will keep a classroom quiet and make the teacher's job easier; it is fear of the sack that will keep the grumbling workers quiet. Fear is also an efficient controlling device. It also helps us to fulfil our roles as consumers. It is fear of life itself that keeps us spending in the arcades and typing our credit-card numbers into websites.” Tom Hodgkinson

VA Scaling Triangles LP (Eustone Music, 1981)

Sub Verse – Science Of Fear

“Anxiety suits the status quo very well. Anxious people
make good consumers and good workers. Governments and big business,
therefore, love terrorism – they adore it, it's good for business.
Anxiety will drive us back into our comfort blankets of credit-card
shopping and bad food, so the system deliberately produces anxiety
while simultaneously promising to take it away.” Tom Hodgkinson

“Terrorism has often served to break the momentum of radical situations. It stuns people, turns them back into spectators anxiously following the latest news and speculations. Far from weakening the state, terrorism seems to confirm the need to strengthen it. If terrorist spectacles fail to spontaneously arise when it needs them, the state itself may produce them by means of provocateurs.” Ken Knabb